New Year’s Eve in New York City

Before I tell you all about our evening, let me tell you about the fun we had throughout the day.

We left my brother’s place around 11am and went into the city. We knew we wanted to go to Central Park, so we headed there first. We walked through most of it and saw lots of the famous landmarks like the Zoo, the Bethesda Terrace, the Boathouse and a lot of the arches throughout the park.

We also stopped at the Belvedere Castle, which was really neat. It had a great view from up top.

My brother and his girlfriend wanted to go to Crumbs to get a cupcake, so we headed there after lunch at a little corner diner.

They had such a huge selection! They even have Colossal ones (on the bottom shelf) that cost $35! They apparently serve 8 people and you slice it up like a cake. With at least 400 calories per serving, they were each over 3,000 calories!!! My brother dared me to eat a whole one, but I said only if he wanted me to be a tired, bitchy and cranky monster for the rest of the day!

Since they didn’t have GF ones (I looked it up on my phone before we left lunch), I said that I wanted to go to Babycakes to get me a GF one after we got theirs. The two shops were seriously on the complete opposite ends of town, so we did a lot of walking to get me mine.

Babycakes is mostly a vegan and refined sugar-free place, but they also have lots of GF options. It really is in such a remote part of town, but I’m glad we went all the way over there. We got to walk through Chinatown and see parts of Little Italy.

I went with the Strawberry Sprinkle, which was excellent! It had hints of lemon in the frosting and I could tell the cake had banana in it. It wasn’t nearly as big as the Crumbs ones, but that’s probably better, right?

After enjoying our cupcakes, we ventured over near the 9/11 memorial. We didn’t realize that you needed visitor passes to see the memorial, so we just got to see a picture of it where they are doing construction on the new towers.

My brother and his girlfriend left us at about 5pm so they could go get ready for their party. My honey and I made our way towards Times Square after going into Macy’s (which really is nothing special on the inside…the best part is what you can see from the street!).

We had already decided that if we couldn’t get close to Times Square, it was okay. We wanted the experience of being in NYC and as long as we had that we were fine with it.

We started walking towards 42nd street, but everything was closed off. We got a back view of the ball at one point, but if we had stayed there, we wouldn’t have gotten to watch the performances on the screens or meet the really cool people we did!

All of the streets were blocked off so you couldn’t even get over to 7th ave, unless you had a reservation at a restaurant, which we did not. However, my honey saw an opportunity for us to get in because there was a cop manning a barricade near a Chipotle on 55th St. He just pointed to the restaurant and the cop let us through! We were finally going to get closer! We made our way over to 7th and settled in for a long evening. We got there at 7:15pm and it was 51 degrees! It was going to be a long wait, but at least it wasn’t going to be a cold wait.

We were squished in around lots of people and noticed a small group next to us about to start a game of Catchphrase. My honey said something to them about what a great idea it was to bring a game and they asked us to join in! Then another small group next to us asked to join in, so we spent the next four hours with all of them playing Catchphrase and standing our ground to keep our spot. It was awesome!

I’m not sure how long I would have lasted had we not met them because playing the game and talking to new people really made the time fly!

This was the screen we watched for the evening because we were so far back from all of the action. I was a little bummed because instead of showing the ball drop at midnight, it just counted down from 60…oh well! I could technically see the ball drop from where we were, but it was just a sliver of it. At least I got to see it, right?

I’m so glad we finally did it! We’ve been talking about spending New Year’s Eve in New York for years! Now we can cross it off our bucket list :)

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The entire trip was awesome! I’m so glad we got to see my roommate in CT and my brother and his girlfriend in NYC! Hard to believe we were only in NYC for less than 40 hours with all of the things we did and saw.

I gained a newfound respect and admiration for the city through this trip. I’ve been a few times before and never truly took the time to appreciate it as much as I did this time. Maybe it’s because I’m older or maybe because I’ve been trying to slow down and really be more in the moment, but either way the trip was so much more than I was expecting.

Having our Smartphones was a huge help! We looked up places to eat, and used Google Maps to help us navigate. I’m not saying we didn’t get lost a time or two, but at least the map helped us get back on track! Plus, they took great pictures that we were able to text to people and post on Facebook while we were there.

Taking the subway was an interesting experience for me and my honey. My brother kept saying it was so simple, but really it’s not until you learn it. I really feel like we learned the system pretty quickly and we rode a ton of the different trains to all parts of the city. Most of the trains and the stations look alike so you really have to be on the lookout for your stop (we missed ours to my brother’s last night and had to get off and get back on another train!). It’s such a great way to travel, but also incredibly dirty! My honey’s germaphobia came out big time when we were on the subway! He was scared to touch anything, while my brother and his girlfriend hung onto the poles and didn’t think twice.

I liked that we didn’t spend a lot of time there, but got to see so much. We were getting tired of the crowds and are excited to get back to our quiet house with our puppy dog, so I don’t think we would have wanted to spend much more time up there. But since the bus is so cheap, maybe we’ll take another trip up there before my brother and his girlfriend move away from the city!